


eyes on fire

by serafinawitchwoman



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Blood, Child Abuse, Child Death, Death, Guns, M/M, The Sads, Vomiting, alessandra and rita are better than you, it's too cliché he won't say he's in love, things are sad and gay and then they are badass and gay
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-28
Updated: 2016-10-28
Packaged: 2018-08-27 14:23:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8404975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/serafinawitchwoman/pseuds/serafinawitchwoman
Summary: He promised he wouldn't disappear.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [badskeletonpuns](https://archiveofourown.org/users/badskeletonpuns/gifts).



> Please be advised that this chapter contains very graphic depictions of child death, vomiting, illness, hallucinations, lots of blood, canon-typical eye-bleeding, references to the murder of a child, and tender loving kisses.  
> Future chapters will contain implied/explicit torture, gun violence, murder of nameless goons, lots more blood, badassery, and (hopefully) lots more kissing.

In his dreams, the walls can talk.  
The hieroglyphs dance and shift and warp, scraping their backs against the stone walls, a susurrus like sim-wind through grass, like whispering, but when he tries to listen closer, to catch them in his hands, they are slippery with sticky red light, and they disappear.  
He's alone in his cell, he knows that, he must be, but Annie's there too, pale and frightened and tired, huddled up on Peter’s old bedroll with her chin on her knees.  
She’s crying so hard, but her face isn’t flushed or contorted, just pale as a moon and covered in silvery tears. She’s looking around, blindly, never at him.

“Annie,” he says. He gets up, crawls toward her, reaches for her, and they’re both crying, and the walls are sticky red but it is so, so dark and cold in that goddamn room. “Annie, Annie, it’s me. It’s Junie. I’m here. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m gonna get us out of here, okay? I promise.”

She looks at him, finally, at last, she can see him, she knows he came back.

“Juno?” she says, her moon face lit with relief and gratitude.

And then she's bleeding, dissolving into the light of the room, bleeding bleeding bleeding from her belly and her chest and a cut on her forehead, and her skull is half-caved in and her face is also his little brother’s, watching him with such hope in their wide bleeding eyes.  
Their voices speak as one from one mouth.  
“Help me.”

Juno looks down, and there is a bloody knife in his hand.

He wakes up with a headache that is exponentially worse than every hangover he’s ever had rolled up into one and coated in a varnish of vomit and hatred for the universe at large. He groans, and realizes that he’s crying, but it hurts too much to care.  
The super-tumor in his head pulses, twitches, like a computer waking up, and he barely notices himself doubling over and vomiting on the floor. The stink makes him retch again, but nothing comes up. He falls back on the pallet, spineless, empty, hollow and starved down to his bones.

“Oh, Juno,” Peter says, and a mercifully cool hand smooths back his hair, cups his cheek. Juno keeps his eyes closed, leans into the touch.

“Peter,” he says, like an invocation, a plea. “Peter, please don’t—“

“Shhhh, my love. Try to rest, please.”

The tears come again, every bit of water in his body drawn up to his eyes like a rising flood; he’s shaking. “Please don’t leave me.”  
In answer, Juno feels cool lips on his forehead, his cheeks, his eyelids, the bridge of his nose, like a balm.  
Peter kisses his mouth, so, so gently, and Juno feels like he might be floating, his whole body glowing, lit from within, warm at last.  
His Peter Nureyev. It’s been so long.

“I love you,” Peter says in a voice like sim-wind through grass, and Juno knows he is dreaming, and he wakes up.

The silent assistant—a young woman, barely more than a girl—stands there watching him. Her eyes are hollow and unfeeling as obsidian.  
“What, no conversation? No cuddling? You want me to just get my clothes and go?” he croaks.

No answer.

“All right, all right, I’m up, I’m up.” He rises as far as he can, but the height makes him dizzy, and the girl takes his elbow to help him stand.  
Her hand is cool, and soothing.

Inch by inch, they leave the cell and walk, like two sacrificial animals, cows primed for slaughter, to the testing room.

**Author's Note:**

> With many thanks to the lovely wendy-comet, uselessgaywhovian, and eroticshark on tumblr for allowing me to use them as sounding boards for the jumble of ideas that would become this emo gay parade. <3  
> Title from "Eyes on Fire" by Blue Foundation.


End file.
